Ms Madeleine Delaney:

It means being more proactive as regards how we deal with matters that arise. It goes back to Deputy Verona Murphy's point. Understandably, in the first years of our establishment, in addition to getting up and running, we have looked at every single concern that has been raised with us. That is because we needed to build an understanding of the sector and the issues and to build our own capacity and ability to know how to deal with these issues. We are now at a point where we will have to be more selective about what we look at on a risk basis. We do risk profiles but we will now have to be more selective. We cannot look at everything. We need to do more proactive supervision. That is one aspect of remaining agile. The other aspect is that, when you have limited resources - and we are not the only body to have limited resources - you constantly look at new, different and better ways of doing things. One of the things we need to look at is the use of information and technology. For some queries in the very early stages of the application process, we may be able to make use of technology such as AI. We are a long way away from that but we are starting the discussion this year. We are having somebody come in to talk to staff about it. The other thing, which is somewhat connected, is data. Data is key not just for us, but for the public.

Much of how the regulatory framework was set up, the powers given to the regulator and what it can and cannot do was designed around a system whereby the information on the register tells people what they need to know. We will have to keep increasing the amount and accuracy of information on the register and make sure people keep it up to date. Then we need the public looking at that register. When we were established, we inherited 8,000 charities that had a charitable tax exemption, CHY, number from Revenue who never came through our process, some of which have engaged to varying degrees, although some of which have been in existence for years and may be our best-known charities. We have a challenge, particularly regarding that cohort and that data. We are trying to tackle this on a piecemeal basis. We hope the new digital platform will give us a tool but we need to get charities producing the information they should be producing in order that the public, as well as ourselves, can see what is going on.